Startup Engineering

About the Course Spiritual sequel to Peter Thiel's CS183 course on startups. Bridges the gap between academic computer science and production software engineering. Fast-paced introduction to key tools and techniques (command line, dotfiles, text editor, distributed version control, debugging, testing, documentation, reading code, deployments), featuring guest appearances by senior engineers from successful startups and large-scale academic projects. Over the course of the class, students will build a command line application, expose it as a web service, and then link other students' applications and services together to build an HTML5 mobile app. General principles are illustrated through modern Javascript and the latest web technologies, including Node, Backbone, Coffeescript, Bootstrap, Git, and Github. Course Format Grading will be based on multiple choice questions and programming assignments, and there will be a substantial final project.
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Rate-of-learning: the most valuable startup compensationThe frothiness of today’s environment in Silicon Valley makes it easy to get sucked into a warped sense of reality. Valuations are high, capital is cheap, housing prices are skyrocketing, and RSUs are flowing like wine. Talk of another “bubble” is rebuffed, even by those who were scarred by the Dot-com collapse of 2000. Undoubtedly, changes in technology over the last 15 years have been breathtaking. One risk of living in this Gilded Age of Tech is the temptation to view your own career and compensation through a disproportionately financial lens—much as a growing company would. Companies are built on 5 to 10 year time horizons, so navigating the feast-or-famine fundraising environment and tracking jaw-dropping economic headlines across the globe are functions of survival. Since the time horizon for your career is long, the most valuable startup compensation you can acquire isn’t a competitive salary, a chunk of stock or a Yoga-laiden benefits package. Compounding interest on learning.

Don’t build. Compose. — on startupsI was driving over the Bay Bridge recently while thinking about the product our company is developing, and trying yet again to somehow map the wild and woolly world of developing software to what feels to me to be the dominant paradigm people use in their mental model of it: civil engineering. It's everywhere in the language: we study software engineering, we do nightly builds, we think about our product architecture. The only problem is that it doesn't match with anyone's experience. You don't usually feel like you're “building” a product at all. There are no blueprints. So, here's the insight I'm currently tossing around in my head: The problem is that software isn't built; it’s written. Engineers are the authors. Product managers are the editors. Perhaps most importantly, the authors and editors need to work together to determine when the novel is finished. Product development is an art, and not a science. P.S.

10 websites to learn PHP for free or cheap : SGEDo you use WordPress? Then you will know what a powerful tool it is for businesses. Part of its attractiveness lies in widgets, which are created with PHP. That makes it a pretty important programming language to learn (On a side note, companies like Facebook and Zynga are built on PHP too). With that in mind, here are 10 sites where you can learn PHP for free or cheap. These resources won’t make you a super programmer overnight of course, but they are enough to get you started on a simple web app or widget. The ten websites: 1. 2 and 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Learning online is fine but… When I was learning how to code myself, I used free resources extensively. Stackoverflow is a great Q&A platform, but I faced another challenge when I tried to ask questions there – I had no idea how to adequately express my problem. I ended up hiring a programmer to tutor me. On the other hand, if you prefer to learn other programming languages, check out my article Ten free sites to learn Ruby on Rails.

Peter Thiel's CS183: Startup - Class 1 Notes EssayPeter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 1 Notes Essay Here is an essay version of my class notes from Class 1 of CS183: Startup. Errors and omissions are my own. Credit for good stuff is Peter’s entirely. CS183: Startup—Notes Essay—The Challenge of the Future Purpose and Preamble We might describe our world as having retail sanity, but wholesale madness. Humanities majors may well learn a great deal about the world. I. For most of recent human history—from the invention of the steam engine in the late 17th century through about the late 1960’s or so— technological progress has been tremendous, perhaps even relentless. The importance of this shift is hard to overstate. The zenith of optimism about the future of technology might have been the 1960’s. But with the exception of the computer industry, it wasn’t. II. Computers have been the happy exception to recent tech deceleration. III. A. Progress comes in two flavors: horizontal/extensive and vertical/intensive. B. C. D. E. IV. V. A. B. C.

Java for EverythingJune 1, 2014 I used to ask interviewees, “What’s your favorite programming language?” The answer was nearly always, “I just choose the right language for the job.” Duh. If the interviewee gave an answer at all, it was, “I’m most familiar with language X,” which didn’t answer my question either. At the time I would myself have replied something like, “I like Python best because it makes me happy to program in it, but I only use it in such-and-such a situation. About a year ago, though, I started to form a strange idea: That Java is the right language for all jobs. Python really is my favorite language, and it truly makes me happy when I code in it. Years ago I read Bruce Eckel’s influential Strong Type vs. Bruce used Python to illustrate his code, and that clinched it: I decided that I would from then on write everything in Python. Several things changed my mind 180° in less than a year: The big argument against Java is that it’s verbose. instead of: userIdMap = {} The reply from @GregB was:

We are expensifyiphone - How to create custom UIAlertViewDreamweaver CS5.5 Tutorials:Build an HTML5 CSS3 webpage by Adobe Guru Robert FarrellIf there is a better, faster way to build an Adobe digital document... I share that with my students! I have been teaching professional level Adobe production techniques since 1987- (27 years) and teaching from my NYC - Manhattan learning studio on West 57th street since 1991. I teach individual and companies looking to improve their Adobe software production skill set or for job seekers looking to stay marketable. I share with my students my own techniques and tips for creating any Adobe digial document quicky and effortlessly. From Acrobat to After Effects from inDesign to Dreamweaver and Illustrator to Photoshop. I can 100% assure you that you will not find my production techniques taught anywhere else. Hey Gals and Guys you have to check out this FREE course on ZERO COST marketing - I 100% recommend - SIGN UP ASAP WATCH NOW

Stanford Engineering Everywhere | HomeThreefold Architects completes light-filled London homeGlass walls and a generous light-filled atrium offer plentiful views of the surrounding garden and sky for residents of this north London house by Threefold Architects (+ slideshow). Located at the end of a terrace in Highgate, the two-storey residence was planned to sit amongst trees, plants and lawns, so the London-based Threefold Architects team allowed this to shape their design. They added floor-to-ceiling glazing at ground level, created juliet balconies on the upper floor, and also arranged the floor plan around a top-lit atrium. This helps to brings light right through the building. "We sought to create a house where the garden almost flowed though it," explained studio co-founder Jack Hosea. "This led to an open ground floor plan that is dug into the site at the back and virtually glazed on all sides, with the central atrium creating a flexible space drawing light and views right into the heart of the house." Named Garden House, the building provides a home for retired couple.

Experiments at AirbnbAirbnb is an online two-sided marketplace that matches people who rent out their homes (‘hosts’) with people who are looking for a place to stay (‘guests’). We use controlled experiments to learn and make decisions at every step of product development, from design to algorithms. They are equally important in shaping the user experience. While the basic principles behind controlled experiments are relatively straightforward, using experiments in a complex online ecosystem like Airbnb during fast-paced product development can lead to a number of common pitfalls. Some, like stopping an experiment too soon, are relevant to most experiments. Others, like the issue of introducing bias on a marketplace level, start becoming relevant for a more specialized application like Airbnb. Experiments provide a clean and simple way to make causal inference. Figure 1 – It’s hard to tell the effect of this product launch. The outside world often has a much larger effect on metrics than product changes do.

Effective On-Site Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for 2011 by Chris ReillyEverybody that owns a website should have a strategy to get people to discover their site, and search engines provide the one of the best ways to do so. Search engine optimization has generally been a sort of "black box" for the majority of web designers and marketers. This course will empower you to be effective at harnessing the power of search engines for your business, with a large focus on "On-site" optimization, meaning things you can do to improve your rankings in Google and Bing by improving the architecture and content of your own site. Information on SEO basics all the way to Post-Panda onsite SEO will be taught at a level that anybody with a basic understanding of the web can grasp. Keyword RelevancePage Load Speed OptimizationURL Canonicalization Content DuplicationCrawl budgetingAnchor text optimization ... and more. Chris Reilly is the founder of Unleashed Online Marketing and is responsible for brining over 1,000,000 visitors to hundreds of sites via SEO efforts.